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Johnny Mnemonic Japan Cut <JM> Extended (Released)

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 (Edited)

“The version relased in Japan is forteen minutes longer. Forteen minutes that weave much more interesting links between between characters, that say longer about themselves, especially Takahashi.” William Gibson in Mad Movies, n°58, November 1995 (translated from already translated French)

Main titles are added at the beginning, featuring the song “Lost” by Stabbing Westward (“bonus song” on the soundtrack). Soundtracks songs are not used the same way and the previous score is composed by Mychael Danna (The Sweet Hereafter, Ride with the Devil) has been kept.

“As far as JM goes, after I finished the film (the “long” version), I left the country (to India where I taught English in a small village in Begal). Meanwhile, they decided to cut the film significantly, and therefore, the music no longer fit, hence the hiring of Brad Fiedel. There is no soundtrack. The Japanese distributor prefered the long version, most countries went with the short one.” Composer Mychael Danna to the webmaster

Of course it’s a must, this long version seems closer to the film that director Robert Longo and writer William Gibson had in mind. Other deleted scenes can be found on the Terry Bisson’s novel (based on the Gibson’s script).

With more than a year of post-production Johnny Mnemonic was reedited again and again, Dolph Lundgren’s brilliant (and lonely acclaimed by the critics) Preacher role being the first victim of it.

“[Johnny] Mnemonic was supposed to show his range; alas, his big monologue was cut.” Beth Pinsker, Entertainment Weekly, n°279, 16 June 1995

“I don’t know why, but I always liked kind of pervers characters like the Street Preacher! They’re characters coming from “The Beggar’s Opera”, likeable bad guys with great sense of humour. A kind of humour that suited Dolph Lundgren’s personality well. After we found his caustic irony, he imposed from himself for the role of Street Preacher.”

“It’s a shame we had to cut one sermon of Dolph Lundgren, Street Preacher, who vehemently condemned the malice of technology, its satanic hold. The scene was deleted from the final cut for a matter of rythm ; it seems it slowed the film down ! Again it’s a pity because it parody of religion which sees the Great Satan in computers ! The Johnny Mnemonic we had in mind was much slower than the one you know. Now it’s a compromise between pure action and science-fiction. When Speed was released, around the end of filming, we had the star of one of the most profitable action films ever ! Then Robert Longo and I had to fight against producers who wanted more stunts and gunfights. They even tried to impose us a chase sequence in bus ! At the begining, Johnny Mnemonic wasn’t the film that marketing is now selling like a Speed sequel. It was entirely re-edited to speed up the tempo, eliminate dialogues for action. When I look at this other Johnny Mnemonic, I see the traces of darker movie, more poetic, more literary in a sense.” William Gibson in Mad Movies, n°58, November 1995 (translated from already translated French)

“In 1989, we wanted to make a little black and white movie for a million dollar. In 1993, we didn’t found one million dollar but 26 millions dollars.”

“We often asked ourselves with William Gibson if we had to leave this fucking film or try to make with the bad ideas from the production and make them as good as possible. When TriStar took control and eliminated all the intermediares involved, it was clearer. The film’s subject is also compromise: for exemple, I would have done a more nihilist version, TriStar insisted on making Johnny-Keanu Reeves likeable.” Robert Longo in Libération, 22 November 1995 (translated from translated French)

“Most of the Preacher’s sequences didn’t survive a pitylessly reducing editing.But the experience turned out to be interesting, breaking off the every day action movies and gauged roles of the blond giant.” from Seven Sept Magazine (“The Peacekeeper”), n°1, September 1999 (translated from French)

William Gibson also said later: "I’ll tell you something you may not believe: Dolph Lungren can actually do comedy. I mean, like, who knew? But he can, and did, with great gusto. The nature of his character was anchored in a scene in his church (he’s the local Panawave-equivalent) in which he preaches, buck nekkid and skin-studded with creepy nano-gizmos, to a congragation of adoring female NAS victims. He delivers a bombastic, faux-Sterlingesque, literally balls-out sermon on the virtues of posthumanity. It came off sort of like Fabio as the Jesus you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. It rocked. Hilarious. So Sony cut it.

They cut it out of fear of offending the religious right. No kidding. They actually told me that. That’s the sort of thing I mean when I say the JM you see is not the movie we shot.

[JM as I wrote it, and Longo shot it, is only available as the published screenplay (but quite readily available as that). I only agreed to publish it, in the first place, because I wanted to be in the position to demonstrate the difference between what I wrote, and we shot, and what they released. I doubt there’s even a remote possibility of there ever being a restored “director’s cut”, although the Japanese version of the DVD is a little closer to our intention.]" from Wiilliam Gibson official site, May 10, 2003

"DRE: What happened with Johnny Mnemonic? I blame Dolph Lundgren.

WG: Oh no [laughs]. I would blame Sony Pictures Imageworks. Nobody got to see the film that Robert Longo shot. Longo shot the script I wrote which I was happy with. The tragedy with Johnny Mnemonic is that we shot an ironic broadly comic action film that at some level was supposed to be about bad science fiction movies. We were not trying to make a blockbuster mainstream adventure film starring Keanu Reeves. When we started shooting that film Keanu wasn’t a movie star. Speed came out while we were shooting. As soon as it was a hit we had guys from the studio coming out of the woodwork telling us that we shouldn’t shoot a funny movie, where’s the bus? It just got worse from there. We kept doing what we wanted to do. Keanu and Dolph were both doing exactly what we told them to do. Sony cut 90 % of Dolph’s role because they said it would offend the religious right. He doesn’t even have a character in the movie they put out. He’s just this insane caveman who comes rushing in and flinging people around. It doesn’t make any sense. In the film we shot you get his backstory where he is preaching stark naked to churches full of women whoa re afflicted with the weird disease in the movie. He completely got into doing this comic villain and it just ended up making him look like an idiot. I personally felt very bad about that because he was doing what he was told to do." William Gibson interviewed on suicidegirls.com


I just got the actaul VCD. title JM

Remember, Highlander, you’ve both still got your full measure of life. Use it well, and your future will be glorious.

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Johnny Mnemonic is on our editing list for a long time... how I would love to get my hands on these 14 minutes... but VCD sounds awful...

Nothing about fanediting is easy.

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VCD was the only released version of teh JM cut ( Japan Cut) I have transfered it well to a DVD -looks great....

Remember, Highlander, you’ve both still got your full measure of life. Use it well, and your future will be glorious.

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I mean the copy I have is clean... pixels are small and picture is clear as hell and in WS. I see they had a laserdsc version however, I have never seen anyone with it... It took me four years to get the actaul DVD.....

Also after further checking, the DVD version is the most complete running ......

Japan:107 min (DVD version) - Version I have -

Japan: 103 min (LD version)

U.S. Cut version 98 min (DVD)

This is the one that I have.....

http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005GDUU/qid%3D1133298446/250-1282484-1308208

I had assumed it was VCD becuase of the age..... so I transfered a DVD to DVD, lol!!!! I couldn't tell because the lettering around the inside of the DVD is in Japanese.... I had assumed it was VCD...... but the cover I have says is the one here and it says DVD.. so it must be DVD

Remember, Highlander, you’ve both still got your full measure of life. Use it well, and your future will be glorious.

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you can still buy the dvd online here:
http://www.sazuma.com/ just search for mnemonic and you´ll find the 103min jap dvd.
I got mine there about 2 years ago. I also had the LD, picture was a lot worse compared to the dvd and I think it had burnt in subs...
The DVD comes in a old style CD-box, so it can easily be mistaken for a VCD
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Just pop the original into your computer DVD drive, go into My Computer, right click on the drive, and click Properties. That'll tell you how many gigabytes are on the disc. If it's 700 MB, then you have a VCD. Several gigs, and it's a DVD.
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I just got a copy of this. The scenes with Japanese dialogue are not subtitled at all, so I'm having it translated and then I will be re-authoring the disc with English subtitles.

I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.

Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

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Originally posted by: ReverendBeastly
I just got a copy of this from Mitch. The scenes with Japanese dialogue are not subtitled at all, so I'm having it translated and then I will be re-authoring the disc with English subtitles.



I would be very interested in seeing that if possible.

Blade Runner: The Complete Collection

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When it's done, I'll be posting back here.

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ReverendBeastly: What's the quality like? Is it a dvd or a vcd?
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It's a DVD. Anamorphic widescreen 1.77:1 ratio (a bit more image information showing than the US release). Looks quite nice.

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Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

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I just realized that this book exists and, from what Mitch quoted Gibson as saying in his first post, it most certainly has the dialogue that was in Japanese in the flick nicely laid out. I don't have any money at all right now, so if someone else wants to buy this for themselves (or for me ) so we can make this subtitle track, that would rock.

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paper is so last century... how about the ebook? turning it into a subtitle track
might be easier by using copy and paste

i also found an audiobook version of it (i think)...
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Thanks for that link, and I would be interested in the audiobook version you may have found, but the key int he book that I linked to is that it contains the screenplay for the film.

I did just buy the book, though (it was less than $5, including shipping), so this project should be seeing updates in a week or so.

I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.

Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

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WTG REV!!

Remember, Highlander, you’ve both still got your full measure of life. Use it well, and your future will be glorious.

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got the audiobook. its got whoosh sound effects lol

taken from: http://www.antonraubenweiss.com/gibson/johnnyadapt.html

'Johnny Mnemonic' audio book (1995)
This is not an audio book version of William Gibson's short story 'Johnny Mnemonic'. In the wake of the huge merchandise of the movie 'Johnny Mnemonic', a novel which tells the storyline of the movie was written by Terry Bisson and published. So the audio book is actually a read version of the novel, which was based on the movie, which on the other hand was made out of the movie script William Gibson wrote adapting his short story 'Johnny Mnemonic'. Adapting a story four times undoubtely doesn't do any good to the quality of the story.

2 audio cassettes approx. 2 hrs.(abridged)
Read by Jack Noseworthy
A Novel By Terry Bisson
Based on the short story by William Gibson
Published by Simon and Schuster Audio Books
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That sounds horrid. Now I definitely want it.

I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.

Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

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Isn't that kinda like taking an english phrase, using babelfish to translate it into Chinese, then Spanish, then German, then French, and back to English?
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It also reminds me of how there were originally the Goosebumpbs books, of which some were adapted for the TV series, and then episodes of the TV series were adapted back into shorter books. Even as a grade skool kid, I found this ridiculous and highly amusing.

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Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

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i remember those goosebumps books were crazy popular back in grade school.
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Just got the book today and spot checked a few scenes, it's got all that I need to work with. Now I just gotta learn how to author subtitles, but that shouldnt be too hard.

I think that this thread is still within boundaries of Rule #4 because it's my understanding that this DVD is OOP in Japan, but if I'm wrong, someone please correct me.

I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.

Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

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Originally posted by: ReverendBeastly
Just got the book today and spot checked a few scenes, it's got all that I need to work with. Now I just gotta learn how to author subtitles, but that shouldnt be too hard.

I think that this thread is still within boundaries of Rule #4 because it's my understanding that this DVD is OOP in Japan, but if I'm wrong, someone please correct me.


I have experience with subtitles, I could help you if you wished.

Blade Runner: The Complete Collection

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If you could point me in the right direction to get me started, I'd appreciate it. I never know where to begin at Doom9...

I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.

Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.